


Ghosts and Maybes

by zombiekittiez



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Dark, F/M, Future AU, Infidelity, Jughead goes to prison, Near Future, Sexual Content, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, mature themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-02 22:46:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10954299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombiekittiez/pseuds/zombiekittiez
Summary: “It's only four years,” Jughead's voice comes through the tinny phone receiver. “I'll be out in four years. Less, maybe, with good behavior.” FP nods along as he listens to his son speak, his eyes a little distant.“Yeah. It's no time at all,” FP lies. After a few minutes, he stands up from the orange plastic chair and walks a few paces away. Betty sits down, picks up the receiver, and places the palm of her hand against the glass- the one with the little gold ring, diamond chip, set in aquamarine. She's been wearing it all of three days.





	Ghosts and Maybes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gellsbells](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gellsbells/gifts).



> Unbeta'd. Got the idea from Gellsbell's 'Crush,' which is cute and fluffy and absolutely nothing like this.

“It's only four years,” Jughead's voice comes through the tinny phone receiver. “I'll be out in four years. Less, maybe, with good behavior.” FP nods along as he listens to his son speak, his eyes a little distant. 

“Yeah. It's no time at all,” FP lies. After a few minutes, he stands up from the orange plastic chair and walks a few paces away. Betty sits down, picks up the receiver, and places the palm of her hand against the glass- the one with the little gold ring, diamond chip, set in aquamarine. She's been wearing it all of three days. 

Drugs, of course. Bad luck. Enough cash, enough little baggies. Intent to distribute. Prior charges. Public defender. Well, what did he expect? The Serpents are a _gang._ Between the two of them, they'd scraped together the bail money. Jug spent the last night as a free man at Pop's eating a large, decent meal. He'd given Betty the ring in their booth and she had taken it, eyes so full of hope and maybes. Afterwards, he'd come back to the trailer with his girl and FP had sat in the living room, tried not to listen through the thin aluminum siding, the bed creaking, the little, muffled noises of awkward, physical affection. Jughead came out after in his boxers, shirtless, a little sheepish, as he picked up two bottles of water and carried them back into the bedroom. 

“Betty's thirsty,” Jughead said, coloring a bit. FP had just nodded, turning up the TV, knowing that part of Jughead Jones at 18 who was embarrassed about sex and deeply in love was going to die in there. Whoever came out of that cell wasn't going to be sweet Juggie, the writer, engaged to his high school sweetheart, always wearing the hat his Mama made for him. It'll be Forsythe Pendleton the Third. 

FP tries to give them privacy when they talk but he can't help but steal glances now and then. She's very beautiful and golden and sweet and in a different world, she could have convinced Jug to do better. In a different world, maybe, he could have done the same. The Jones have always been poor, but they haven't always been trash. He made them what they are, FP knows. These are his choices, now he has to live with them. 

Betty and FP sit on the bus back in silence. Once, towards the end of the two hour ride, Betty takes a deep, ragged breath. 

“Are you okay?” FP asks gruffly. It's a stupid question. She doesn't answer. 

Her parents don't appreciate the ring. Betty wears it anyway. She stops by the trailer once a week with scones or a casserole to talk about how he's holding up and how she misses him so. FP wonders vaguely who Gladdie used to talk to. Ah, but Gladdie wasn't anything like Betty. FP had chosen her carefully for type- as different as different could be. His eyes had ached for golden hair and sharp blue eyes. But that was never meant for the likes of him. Gladdie had been plain faced, dark haired, reliable. He'd loved her like you would a pet rabbit or a stray dog. 

“How's your Mom?” FP asks abruptly into the silence. 

Betty looks at him, glance measuring. “She's good,” Betty says. “Her and Dad are bonding over the babies. They're even sleeping in the same room again.” 

“That's good,” FP says into his plate. 

FP doesn't see Betty for a few months- first semester at the college. She doesn't say but he knows not to see her off on the bus. This is a _Cooper thing_ and it's bad enough, what the Jones have done to these girls. When she comes back, straight A's and a handful of internships, she's still wearing the ring. She fights with her mother. FP knows when Betty shows up at the trailer, duffle bag under her arm and her breathing ragged. She takes over the living room. She doesn't take Jug's old room and they don't talk about it. FP eats dinner with Betty every night. She cooks in a frenzy- pot roast, meatloaf, chicken noodle soup. The flavors are sweet in his mouth. He can see a different blonde at the stove sometimes. They visit the prison once a week. 

Jug talks about correspondence courses- he's writing, a little, in the notebooks he buys at the commissary. They put a little more money on his account for shampoo and black ink pens, for calling cards and cigarettes. 

“To trade,” FP says, on the ride back. “For things he might need.” 

“I figured,” Betty says dryly, and the glint in her eye is a good look on her, FP thinks. 

That night, the last night before Betty heads back to campus, FP hears her in the middle of the night. The door creaks open and she goes from the living room to Jug's old room, lies on the bed. She cries a little, calling her lover's name softly, under her breath, like a summoner's spell and he knows this is why she won't sleep there- there is no sleep to be had. After a time her sobs subside and there is calm but she is not asleep and he is not asleep; he wonders if the Dad thing to do here is to get up and make some tea or some shit when he hears her again. 

She is _not_ crying this time. 

Betty whispers his name – _Jug, Juggie_ \- and cloth rustles and the walls here are very thin. FP rolls his eyes to himself and tries to block out the noise, to get some sleep when she gives a hitching little growl in the back of her throat and he is suddenly seventeen again, Alice Klump spread beneath him, all white teeth and red lipstick and he is _hard._ He slips his hands beneath the sheet and comes dirty and fast as Betty cries out. 

He gives her a ride to the bus on the back of his bike. Her legs are warm on either side of him; her chest presses softly into the leather at his back. When they idle, she traces the pattern of the serpent; he wonders how much his son has grown to look like him, at this angle. He goes home and gets off three times. 

When summer break rolls around, Betty doesn't bother stopping back at home. She moves back in like she had never left; FP wakes up to pancakes and wonders if the time between was just a dream. Her grades are not so good this time. He can tell from the set of her mouth that she doesn't expect things from people anymore. He knows he ought to feel bad- this, his son ( _himself_ ) dragging this girl away from the beauty of the world and into the unhappy knowledge that the world is shit and you have got to be hard to face it but he can't help but see the way the sharp angles of her face are so attractive, alert, familiar. 

Betty wears the ring, but only when they go to visit. Otherwise she puts it in a dish beside the bathroom sink. 

“It's too hard,” Betty says on the bus ride back. She'd have her degree, by the time he saw the outside of a cell again. She isn't complaining; she's stating a fact. 

“You do what you have to, girlie,” FP says, touching her ponytail a little without thinking. Her eyes, when she turns them on him go harsh to kind to blank again. 

“You are more like your mother every day,” he says without thinking and she stiffens and turns away. He wonders if she knows that from him, that's a compliment. When they get home, he picks up a bottle of whiskey and they share it, for dinner. When she gets drowsy, he lays her on the couch and heads to bed. He doesn't sleep long. Neither does she. 

FP is not a good man- maybe never was a good man. But he likes to think that if it had been anybody else, dressed any other way, he would have said no. But a blonde, _that_ blonde, in his doorway, wearing nothing but his Serpent jacket, pulled from the hall closet, well. 

FP doesn't say no. 

He takes her on the kitchen counter, wrists pinned above her head. He takes her bent over the couch arm, his hands cradling her chest, thumbing circles over sensitive flesh. It isn't her, not really, some dim part of his mind says, but he is drunk enough and she smells right. So what if she trembles, overwhelmed, when he dips between her legs to taste her? So what if she tenses, uncertain and awkward, as he pulls her into climax? Was she looking for sweet kisses and tentative, probing touches? Well, she got him. FP takes and he takes and he takes. He takes her pleasure, forces those hard little growls out of her as he raises her up and slams her down on his lap, on the couch, twisted up inside her in every way. She never asks him to stop. 

When he comes inside her, he says _Allie._ Betty says nothing. He sleeps. She doesn't. 

In the morning, Betty is already dressed and sitting on the edge of the bed, writing a letter to Jughead when FP wakes up. He sits up and watches her for a moment. 

“Who are you punishing, him or me?” FP asks and the look she turns on him is so full of contempt and _Alice_ that he has to check himself to keep from reaching out to pull her back down into the bed. 

“Myself,” she says. “Clearly.” 

FP waits three weeks before he visits Jug. He'd never stayed away so long but he knows and Jug knows and she knows that he knows- left the letter on the table before she posted it, let him see the words that sear honest, careful, incisive, gutting him and her and everyone. She drops it at the post office before she takes the bus back to the city. A new semester is starting. Once it's over, she wrote, she will be transferring out of state. 

“Dad.” Jug's eyes are wild, feverish. Hopeful. He talks about the life he's gonna have when he gets out. He's gonna work his way through school, finish up with a degree about the same time they stop asking about seven year felony convictions. He's gonna find her, this blonde he loves, gonna get her back, gonna live together. Get married. Live that good life. I'm gonna be different, Dad. It's all gonna be different just as soon as I get out, just as soon as I take care of a few things, I just need a little more _time-_

“I know,” FP says.

**Author's Note:**

> ... Sorry. Feedback appreciated. You can absolutely yell at me.


End file.
